Ranch Owner Recalls Finding Justice Antonin Scalia’s Body

HOUSTON — When Justice Antonin Scalia did not respond to a knock at the door of his suite at the Cibolo Creek Ranch at 8:30 a.m. on Saturday, John B. Poindexter, the property’s owner, was not alarmed.

Perhaps the 79-year-old justice was attending to Supreme Court business, Mr. Poindexter thought, or simply did not wish to be disturbed on his first morning at the remote ranch in West Texas. It was less than three hours later, when Mr. Poindexter tried again, that he found Justice Scalia’s body.

Justice Scalia had no pulse and was clearly dead, Mr. Poindexter recalled in an interview on Sunday.

“His hands were sort of almost folded on top of the sheets,” said Mr. Poindexter, a manufacturing executive from Houston.

He added: “It was just like he was taking a nap. He just went to sleep and didn’t wake up.”

Justice Scalia had arrived at the 30,000-acre ranch on Friday to participate in one of the weekend gatherings that Mr. Poindexter, who has owned the Cibolo Creek property since 1990 and restored its three historic forts into a secluded retreat, hosts a few times each year. Justice Scalia and Mr. Poindexter had met just once, in Washington, and the justice had traveled to Texas after a friend of Mr. Poindexter’s suggested inviting him, the ranch owner said.

In the day leading up to his death, Justice Scalia was “very congenial, very convivial,” Mr. Poindexter said, as the party roamed the property, and some hunted for quail. Justice Scalia did not participate in the hunt, but he did observe.

“I don’t think you’ll find another place like this in Texas that has such quiet, such fantastic star shows at night and simple luxuries,” said Shelby Hodge, a former society columnist with The Houston Chronicle who is now editor at large at CultureMap.

Many of those at the ranch during the weekend, Ms. Hodge said, were from Washington, but others were from San Antonio, Houston and Kerrville.

Around 9 p.m., after a cocktail reception and dinner, Justice Scalia, who had flown to Texas early Friday, told Mr. Poindexter that he was going to turn in for the night, and went to the property’s presidential suite.

The next morning, Justice Scalia did not appear for breakfast, and Mr. Poindexter went to look for him.

“I knocked on the door loudly,” said Mr. Poindexter, who said Justice Scalia and the other guests had been staying at the ranch free for the weekend. “I had him in a very large room — a suite — and I thought he might be in the bathroom.”

Just after 11 a.m., Mr. Poindexter and a friend of Justice Scalia’s tried the door again, again to no answer. They entered the room, and it took no medical training, Mr. Poindexter said, to recognize that Justice Scalia was dead.

Mr. Poindexter called a hospital and, without identifying Justice Scalia, reported what had happened. A hospital official, Mr. Poindexter said, assessed that it would be impossible to resuscitate Justice Scalia, and ranch officials contacted the United States Marshals Service.

That call set into motion hours of intense discussions about how to navigate the protocols associated with the death of a Supreme Court justice outside the Washington area.

“No identity or clue was given that this was not another body found by hunters in the desert,” David Beebe, a justice of the peace, wrote in an email Saturday night.

Judge Beebe said County Judge Cinderela Guevera had ultimately pronounced Justice Scalia dead by telephone and “ruled it natural causes based on credible information.” She did not respond to messages on Sunday.

As the authorities grappled with the death, the Rev. Mike Alcuino of the Santa Teresa de Jesús Church in Presidio was summoned to administer the last rites to Justice Scalia, a Catholic.

“It was just proper to call in a Catholic priest for the last rites,” Father Alcuino said on Sunday. Around midnight Sunday, a hearse carrying Justice Scalia’s body left the ranch property, bound for Sunset Funeral Homes in El Paso, more than 200 miles away.

Sasha von Oldershausen contributed reporting from Presidio, Tex.

A version of this article appears in print on , on Page A14 of the New York edition with the headline: Owner of Texas Ranch Recalls Finding Justice’s Body . Order Reprints | Today’s Paper | Subscribe